Global Insight
February 18, 2008

EU Says Turkey is Committed to Nabucco

by Zoe Grainge

The European Union (EU) co-ordinator for natural gas projects in
Southern Europe, Jozias van Aarsten, said at the weekend that Turkey
was fully committed to the EU-endorsed Nabucco pipeline project. Van
Aarsten had held a meeting with Turkish officials and planned to hold
further talks soon on a disagreement over a pricing mechanism for the
project. Turkey has failed to agree on the pricing of the project and
is also opposed to French company Gaz de France
joining the consortium that will build the pipeline. Turkey has been
angered by France’s objections to its bid to join the EU and by
French moves to make denying the alleged Armenian genocide. Turkey
rejects the label genocide and insists the mass killings of Armenians
at the start of the last century were the result of the chaos of war.
A delegation, led by France’s Trade Minister, is scheduled to visit
the Turkish capital, Ankara, next week to try, among other things, to
overcome Turkey’s objections to Gaz de France, the state-run Anatolia
news agency reported.

Significance:In the past two weeks, there has been a lot of newsflow
from Nabucco. The latest EU-level talks come after the European
Commission confirmed its approval of a third-party access exemption
for the Austrian stretch of the proposed Nabucco pipeline. The
decision means the project developers–OMV, MOL, Transgaz, Bulgargaz,
BOTAS, and RWE–will have exclusive rights to use up to 50% of the
pipeline’s Austrian-based capacity. Turkey has made two public
objections to GDF joining Nabucco, and differences need to ironed out
fast if the project is to keep up its current momentum.